


Paying Respects

by ilcuoreardendo



Series: Shadows in the Mojave [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Gen, Goodsprings, Hurt, Pain, The Hub - Freeform, emotional distress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 00:50:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3309551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilcuoreardendo/pseuds/ilcuoreardendo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Kneeling, she swipes her hand across the earth, disturbs the soil that had turned russet from her blood, scoops up a handful and sits back on her heels. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>The grave is nondescript, shallow, peppered with cigarette butts instead of flowers.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paying Respects

**Author's Note:**

> A short scene that, had it worked, would've come just before the first chapter of [Dispatches from New Vegas](http://archiveofourown.org/works/767436/chapters/1438633). Almost directly follows "Waking Up in Goodsprings."

* * *

 

_There’s something to be said for cemeteries_ , Isa thinks, cresting the slope of the hill and seeing the grave markers rise out of the ground like strange growths. _Mostly, that they’re still._  

It’s the stillness she needs now. 

Since she stumbled out of Doc’s house a few days ago, unsteady on her legs, blinking stupidly into the afternoon sun, she hasn’t stopped moving. 

Between working with Sunny to keep the geckos at bay and doing as many chores as Trudy can find for her, from scrubbing the saloon floors to fixing the radio—granted, it shorts out at times, but Trudy can hear her Mr. New Vegas again—she hasn’t had a moment to stop and think.  
  
And she’s liked it that way. 

No time to think about how shaky and unfamiliar the ground feels beneath her feet. No time to think about the still healing wounds beneath the bandage on her temple. No time to consider just how fucking lucky she was. No time to wonder what might have happened if Victor hadn’t been there, or if she’d been ambushed just a little further down the road, or if Doc Mitchell hadn’t been available, or if that bullet had buried itself into her skull a different way, or if.... 

“Stop!” Her voice shocks her out of her mental loop. She shakes her head and continues into the cemetery, winding between the markers, until she stands beside the open grave. 

Kneeling, she swipes her hand across the earth, disturbs the soil that had turned russet from her blood, scoops up a handful and sits back on her heels. 

The grave is nondescript, shallow, peppered with cigarette butts instead of flowers.  

The first time she came up here—when she was following Sunny around, trying to get her bearings—she shied away from the open earth, the mound of soft dirt.

Now, sitting here, she isn’t sure what she was so skittish about. 

It’s just a hole in the ground. 

A hole that was meant for her. 

Her vision blurs, her breath catches in her throat and she coughs. 

“ _Fuck_.” She drags the back of her hand across her cheek. She is _not_ crying. It’s the breeze blowing dirt into her face, the too bright sunlight, the bone deep ache crawling across her temple that makes her want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head, wishing the world away. 

Too bad she doesn’t have a bed to crawl into. 

_That’s not helpful_ , she thinks, tongue worrying a cut on her bottom lip. _Mind on the job, Reyes. You’ve got two options_. _Sit here and wallow or figure out what the hell was in that package and why someone would try to kill you for it.  
_

She takes a shaky breath. 

_First things first: consider what you know._  

She knows this delivery started out like most any other: leave a package, sign the necessary forms, wait around for the Express bureaucrats to confirm delivery on the radio, pick up the new package.   
  
One that was bound for The Strip. 

She’d never been to Vegas proper and she was looking forward to the trip, itching to get back out on the road and away from the humdrum bustle of the Hub. 

The trek toward Nevada from the Hub isn’t really worth the space it takes up in her head, but she remembers it: bland scenery, broken highways and random obstacles, including that gang of Raiders that had her skirting the main road and taking a little known mountain pass, which she’d first stumbled across years ago, through the hills behind Goodsprings. 

She’d seen the smear of Vegas on the horizon, looking like a glittering mirage on the cusp of the evening. 

And that’s where things get fuzzy. 

The light, the road. She can see faces blurring in and out of focus and hear voices tinny, far away, garbled. She thinks she heard one of them say something about a house. And then it was all obscured by the sharp pain in the back of her head. 

They’d hit her. Dragged her off the I-15 and then....

She drops the handful of dirt into her grave. 

And maybe because luck or fate or God or _something_ has it in for her, at that moment, there’s the faint yet unmistakable crack of a gunshot erupting from the town below her. Not uncommon, certainly, but when she turns, she catches the sight of several people, their forms and faces unremarkable at this distance, rushing away from the saloon. 


End file.
